1. External Challenges
-1804-1824, France lost control of Haiti, Portugal of Brazil, and Spain the rest of Latin America except for Cuba and Puerto Rico
-Led by landed Creole elites (America-born people of European descent), Latin American independence movements were influenced by Enlightenment thought and the examples of the French and American Revolutions
-Runaway slaves called Maroons were living in outlaw societies behind the lines of colonial settlement in South America, the Caribbean, and Spanish Florida, waged sporadic guerilla attacks against local plantations, a phenomenon known as the Maroon Wars
2. The Antislavery Movement in Europe
-Religious antislavery sentiment served as the catalyst to abolitionism
-Newer forms of Protestantism condemned slavery as a sin antithetical to religious tenets of brotherly love and spiritual equality
3. The Influence of the Enlightenment
-Locke’s ideas, in particular his critique of arbitrary power, appeal to rule by reason, and championing of natural and universal human rights, shaped arguments mounted against slavery by Enlightenment humanists such as Baron Montesquieu and Denis Diderot a century later
-Enlightenment universalism, or belief in the basic sameness of all humans, undermined the acceptance of slavery and allowed eighteenth century thinkers to link oppressed Africans to the disenfranchised poor of Europe
-This view was perhaps best encapsulated in Rousseau’s cult of the noble savage, which contrasted the natural virtues of the so-called primitive with the moral flaws of civilized Europeans and further fostered popular sympathy for enslaved Africans
4. The Free-Trade Lobby
-Anti-slavery sentiment was strongly reinforced by merchants and industrialists seeking to replace the mercantile colonial systems—and its system of protective tariffs intended to privilege trade between colony and mother country—with free trade
-European manufacturers objected increasingly to the protective tariffs levied on foreign imports in the mercantile marketplace
-Tariffs effectively prevented domestic manufacturers and consumers from buying cheaper foreign goods, compelling them instead to purchase goods, exclusively from domestic producers, at home or in the colonies
-Capitalists drew on critiques of mercantilism and the slave economy elaborated by Enlightenment classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo
-Argued that market competition was both natural and rational because it afforded economic liberty to individuals and benefited the majority by generating lower prices all around
-Rapid deterioration of Haiti and Jamaica in the closing years of the eighteenth century offered compelling evidence that the mercantile slave economy was economically retrograde
5. The End of European Slavery
-Denmark outlawed the Atlantic slave trade first in 1803, followed by Britain and the United States in 1807
-Britain had a zealous antislavery mission
-Britain provided a passage to Liberia an African settlement created for and partly by freed American slaves in 1821
B. New Sources of Colonial Legitimacy
1. The Growth of the Market Economy
-From 1830-1870, the peak era of economic liberalism
-European nation-states competed with one another for spheres of economic influence abroad
-Europeans were quick to abandon free trade when they perceived their own economic interests to be threatened by indigenous and other European competitors
2. Enlightenment Universalism
-Liberal empire had roots in Enlightenment theories of human biological and cultural sameness and belief in human improvement through the application of reason to social reform
-Although Enlightenment natural scientists like the Swede Carolus Linneaus or the Frenchman Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon sought to classify the varieties of human physical types, they assumed that the “races” of man belonged to a single species
-While different societies had attained different levels of civilization, all of them occupied positions along a common developmental path
-Development could be guided and accelerated through reasoned social intervention
3. Cultural Relativism
-The majority of Europeans, both secular and religious, saw the assimilation of other peoples to European political, economic, and cultural models as a moral imperative and colonial domination as the ideal means to achieve this end
4. The Case of Captain Cook
-Captain James Cook’s expeditions to the South Pacific to locate the missing continent known as Terra Australis
-Geographers, botanists, etc. accompanied Cook
-King George III authorized Cook to establish Britain authority in Hawaii in 1779, for example, but cautioned him to do so only with the express consent of the natives
5. The Civilizing Mission in India
-Evangelical missionaries: Charles Grant and William Wilberforce sought to bring religious enlightenment and to stamp out Indian “superstition”, secular liberal reformers like Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill, determined to rid India of “Oriental despotism” by eradicating “barbaric” Indian laws and customs and introducing a British-style educational system
-Liberal reformers sought to apply liberal ideas to eliminate the barriers of custom and tradition and managed to bring about several important policy changes in India
-Controversial reforms was a prohibit sati, the practice of the widow burning herself to death on the funeral pyre of her dead husband
A. The Decline of the Mercantile Colonial World
1. External Challenges
-1804-1824, France lost control of Haiti, Portugal of Brazil, and Spain the rest of Latin America except for Cuba and Puerto Rico
-Led by landed Creole elites (America-born people of European descent), Latin American independence movements were influenced by Enlightenment thought and the examples of the French and American Revolutions
-Runaway slaves called Maroons were living in outlaw societies behind the lines of colonial settlement in South America, the Caribbean, and Spanish Florida, waged sporadic guerilla attacks against local plantations, a phenomenon known as the Maroon Wars
2. The Antislavery Movement in Europe
-Religious antislavery sentiment served as the catalyst to abolitionism
-Newer forms of Protestantism condemned slavery as a sin antithetical to religious tenets of brotherly love and spiritual equality
3. The Influence of the Enlightenment
-Locke’s ideas, in particular his critique of arbitrary power, appeal to rule by reason, and championing of natural and universal human rights, shaped arguments mounted against slavery by Enlightenment humanists such as Baron Montesquieu and Denis Diderot a century later
-Enlightenment universalism, or belief in the basic sameness of all humans, undermined the acceptance of slavery and allowed eighteenth century thinkers to link oppressed Africans to the disenfranchised poor of Europe
-This view was perhaps best encapsulated in Rousseau’s cult of the noble savage, which contrasted the natural virtues of the so-called primitive with the moral flaws of civilized Europeans and further fostered popular sympathy for enslaved Africans
4. The Free-Trade Lobby
-Anti-slavery sentiment was strongly reinforced by merchants and industrialists seeking to replace the mercantile colonial systems—and its system of protective tariffs intended to privilege trade between colony and mother country—with free trade
-European manufacturers objected increasingly to the protective tariffs levied on foreign imports in the mercantile marketplace
-Tariffs effectively prevented domestic manufacturers and consumers from buying cheaper foreign goods, compelling them instead to purchase goods, exclusively from domestic producers, at home or in the colonies
-Capitalists drew on critiques of mercantilism and the slave economy elaborated by Enlightenment classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo
-Argued that market competition was both natural and rational because it afforded economic liberty to individuals and benefited the majority by generating lower prices all around
-Rapid deterioration of Haiti and Jamaica in the closing years of the eighteenth century offered compelling evidence that the mercantile slave economy was economically retrograde
5. The End of European Slavery
-Denmark outlawed the Atlantic slave trade first in 1803, followed by Britain and the United States in 1807
-Britain had a zealous antislavery mission
-Britain provided a passage to Liberia an African settlement created for and partly by freed American slaves in 1821
B. New Sources of Colonial Legitimacy
1. The Growth of the Market Economy
-From 1830-1870, the peak era of economic liberalism
-European nation-states competed with one another for spheres of economic influence abroad
-Europeans were quick to abandon free trade when they perceived their own economic interests to be threatened by indigenous and other European competitors
2. Enlightenment Universalism
-Liberal empire had roots in Enlightenment theories of human biological and cultural sameness and belief in human improvement through the application of reason to social reform
-Although Enlightenment natural scientists like the Swede Carolus Linneaus or the Frenchman Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon sought to classify the varieties of human physical types, they assumed that the “races” of man belonged to a single species
-While different societies had attained different levels of civilization, all of them occupied positions along a common developmental path
-Development could be guided and accelerated through reasoned social intervention
3. Cultural Relativism
-The majority of Europeans, both secular and religious, saw the assimilation of other peoples to European political, economic, and cultural models as a moral imperative and colonial domination as the ideal means to achieve this end
4. The Case of Captain Cook
-Captain James Cook’s expeditions to the South Pacific to locate the missing continent known as Terra Australis
-Geographers, botanists, etc. accompanied Cook
-King George III authorized Cook to establish Britain authority in Hawaii in 1779, for example, but cautioned him to do so only with the express consent of the natives
5. The Civilizing Mission in India
-Evangelical missionaries: Charles Grant and William Wilberforce sought to bring religious enlightenment and to stamp out Indian “superstition”, secular liberal reformers like Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill, determined to rid India of “Oriental despotism” by eradicating “barbaric” Indian laws and customs and introducing a British-style educational system
-Liberal reformers sought to apply liberal ideas to eliminate the barriers of custom and tradition and managed to bring about several important policy changes in India
-Controversial reforms was a prohibit sati, the practice of the widow burning herself to death on the funeral pyre of her dead husband